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By Kay Hanifen
The inn fell silent as the Innkeeper shut the door. In all his centuries, he could never get used to the quiet that came after the living passed on. Somewhere in the inn, a clock chimed twelve. Christmas Eve had passed, and Christmas Day had just begun. He returned to the living room. The record switched to a church choir singing Silent Night. The St. Wenceslas Carolers truly had lovely voices. This would be the last he or anyone else would ever hear them.
So, he took one of his cookies and sat in his wingback chair by the fire. Closing his eyes, he listened to the music, only opening them when a heavy weight dropped in his lap. He smiled and scratched under Nicodemus’s chin.
“The Yule Log is almost gone,” he said.
“I don’t know why you bother with this,” the demon replied. He tried to sound annoyed, but the purr rumbling from his chest told a different story.
The Innkeeper raised his eyebrows. “With what?”
“The charade, the presents, the feast. Any of it. Right now, your attention is being split in infinite directions as you direct all living beings to the afterlife, from the smallest gnat to the greatest blue whale. Why maintain this and an infinite number of charades for them? Why not simply send them to the door?”
The Innkeeper sighed. It was a well-worn debate, a question that he frequently asked himself too, and he rarely had a satisfactory answer. “Because the living will cling to life by their fingertips,” he replied as he always did, “They need this. They need to process their losses, their regrets, their lives. I may be the gatekeeper of the afterlife, but they will not leave without learning to let go of all that tethers them here.”
The cat scoffed. “Come on. We both know it’s something more than duty that drives you. I think you envy the mortals and their short, meaningless lives. You want to pretend, even just for a few hours, that you’re one of them.”
“And I’m the only one who pretends?” He chuckled, ruffling the cat’s soft fur. “Don’t think I didn’t see you letting them pet you. You enjoy this charade almost as much as I do. Why else do you refuse to speak to anyone but me?”
Nicodemus kneaded his claws in the Innkeeper’s lap, partly out of the pleasure of being pet and partly to cause the Innkeeper pain. “No one else has anything interesting to say.”
The Innkeeper didn’t dignify that with a response. The demon had a point, after all. He did this because he liked it. He liked participating in traditions, no matter where or when. He enjoyed the coziness of Christmas, the solemnity of Yom Kippur, the romance of the Mid-Autumn Moon festival and the joy of Eid al Fitr and Diwali. It made him feel closer to humanity. And if anyone asked, it was what made him better at his job by allowing him to connect with humans. But the truth was that he was a lonely, solitary being. He would never experience a true community because everyone he met was on their way to some place he couldn’t follow. His only job was to get them there.
So these traditions and this charade, as Nicodemus called it, gave him a taste of community. For a short time, he would have more friends than just a demon cat who spent most of the year dormant, and he could pretend. Because that’s what traditions were. Rituals and symbols and rules invented by humans to create community and maintain order. All these wonderful human constructs attempting to make meaning out of an incomprehensible world and to feel less alone within it. He was not naturally a being of creation, only destruction, but this game of pretend allowed him to be a creator and a member of a community, if only for a little while.
The Yule Log sputtered once, twice, and then died, the light receding from the room as shadows overtook it. The record stopped playing its music as the wind howling outside reached a fever pitch. The cookies vanished from their plates and the feast he’d prepared disappeared with it. The needles fell from the dying tree as the inn itself decayed back to the original state that the Innkeeper found it in, abandoned and lonely. The chairs and couches were no longer plush, and the windows no longer kept out the cold.
Even some buildings have souls, and this one was grateful to have been able to enjoy one last night of life and joy before the snow accumulating on its roof became too much for it to bear, and the former inn collapsed into rubble.
Now, it was the Innkeeper’s turn to move on. There were so many souls out there still in need of his help. The cat jumped from his lap and looked up at him. “Ready?” Nicodemus asked.
“I’m ready.” He reached down and scratched behind the Yule Cat’s ears. “Merry Christmas, Nicodemus.”
The Yule Cat’s chest rumbled softly. “Merry Christmas.” And then they vanished like a candle blown out, plunging the inn into silence and darkness.
But the building knew that, for one glorious night, it had been filled again with warmth and light, and that was enough for it as the roof collapsed under the weight of the snow.
